Dehydrated vegetables are important items of commerce. They are processed fresh vegetables in shelf-stable form and are used extensively in the food industry, particularly to provide colour, flavour and nutritional benefits to a wide variety of dry packaged foods.
In the packaged food industry they are especially important in cup soups, cup noodles and in packaged rice and pasta dishes. These are convenience products and quick cook times are regarded as important. In many products the cooking directions call for the addition of boiling water only, without further cooking. The use of vegetables in these products may require the use of expensive freeze-dried vegetables, or else very small dehydrated vegetable pieces. As the hot product may take about two to three minutes to cool sufficiently to be comfortable to consume, it is desirable that the vegetables be sufficiently rehydrated within this time. Conventional dehydrated vegetables, even small pieces, are usually still hard and gritty after three minutes due to incomplete rehydration. Freeze-dried vegetables are expensive and often still spongy in texture after two to three minutes. For products cooked in the microwave or on stove top, a desirable cook time is as short as possible, preferably below five minutes. It is therefore highly desirable to have an economical dehydrated vegetable component that rehydrates quickly enough to be pleasant to consume after boiling water is added and allowed to stand for two to three minutes, and rehydrates back to a natural tasting piece of vegetable.
Alternate quick-cooking dehydrated vegetables such as solute added products (U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,141) or puffed vegetables (U.S. Pat. No. 3,038,813) have been described, but neither appear to give products sufficiently quick-cooking for many convenience packaged foods.
The term “vegetable” as used in this application refers to fresh or frozen fleshy vegetables such as carrots, peas, peppers, tomatoes, sweet corn and such, but does not refer to dry products of vegetable origin such as wheat, corn, dry legumes and such, and dried fruits such as apple.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,408,209 describes subjecting explosion puffed vegetables as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,038,813 and compressing them for the purpose of reducing their bulk for packaging purposes. There is no claim that this process reduces cooking time.
There is a need for a dehydrated vegetable product with a cook time of from instant to about five minutes, which is not gritty, has a pleasant texture and mouth feel, and is inexpensive to prepare. It is to be understood that cook time refers to the time at which the vegetable piece is substantially rehydrated to its size prior to dehydration and is free from hard or gritty centres.
The result may be achieved by mechanically compressing partially dehydrated vegetable pieces, as by passing between the rolls of a roller mill or by other means, to an extent whereby the pieces are noticeably flattened, but not to such an extent that the texture of the rehydrated product is unacceptably altered from that of a rehydrated vegetable piece which had not been compressed. The vegetable is then further dried to a moisture content of about 5% or lower, or in the case of intermediate moisture products, to a higher level. Surprisingly, the compressed vegetable pieces, when rehydrated, return to much the same size and shape as the original pieces prior to initial dehydration but in a significantly shorter time than untreated dehydrated vegetables.